Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

Depends, if we legalize Cocaine will people stop using Meth? Cocaine isn't nearly as harmful and was actually legal to use prior to the 1900's.

Meth is bad but I think its a drug of opportunity, you don't need poppies or coca from far away lands to make it, just a bunch of chemicals and it can be sold cheaper to boot but it is drastically more harmful than Cocaine and Heroin (both also addicting and should be used with extreme caution as should all drugs including alcohol)

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

Because they are highly addictive and expensive; that combination leads to violent crime due to the desperation that results from needing a fix but not having the resources.

In addition, meth in particular has some pretty nasty psychological effects. Do you really want to be around meth users?

The legalization argument makes sense with marijuana as a plant, but not so much with drugs that require processing.

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

Cocaine was legal at one point. There were some pretty serious public health problems ensuing from that. You can go back and look at the statistics.

Lack of education, knowledge about what people are consuming, and absurdly harsh penalties under law are far more damaging to society than drugs themselves, not to mention all the money going to gang violence because of it. People aren't going to stop doing them, so it'd be better to make it safer.

Prescriptions kill more people than purely illicit drugs do, despite being harder to get in many cases. Recent laws regarding opiate-based painkillers have driven significant amounts of people to heroin which is easier to find, and black markets ensure people come up with truly dangerous substances like krokodil.

Do I need to mention how many high-functioning members of society use cocaine completely fine? Politicians, CEOs, celebrities and most general users all get away with it but we don't hear about that. We only hear about the trauma and fallout our laws create.

Besides, I'd bet you a lot of money that if you legalized meth most people still wouldn't go near it. I know I wouldn't. That's where education comes in.

This isn't even touching on alcohol, which does more societal damage than any illegal drugs but we learned our lesson way back in the prohibition days that it's not tenable. It just had the fortune of being en vogue and what most of the world had already used for thousands of years.

Do you know anyone that does not use these drugs now that would suddenly start if they were legal? I say decriminalize, regulate, tax, educate, treat those that need it. Stop pissing away money on the 'war on drugs'.

Depends, if we legalize Cocaine will people stop using Meth? Cocaine isn't nearly as harmful and was actually legal to use prior to the 1900's.

Meth is bad but I think its a drug of opportunity, you don't need poppies or coca from far away lands to make it, just a bunch of chemicals and it can be sold cheaper to boot but it is drastically more harmful than Cocaine and Heroin (both also addicting and should be used with extreme caution as should all drugs including alcohol)

I don't know how you're concluding that cocaine is safer than methamphetamine.

I know that far more Americans are killed annually by cocaine than by meth. Alcohol kills even more (alcohol poisoning; the data excludes substance-caused accidental deaths like car accidents). And legally produced pharmaceuticals kill even more than alcohol.

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

In addition, meth in particular has some pretty nasty psychological effects. Do you really want to be around meth users?

And in the end, I probably wouldn't, but I'd rather take the ones less likely to resort to crime to get their fix, or who can be monitored more to help avoid abuse situations rather than keeping it buried underground than our status quo.

Depends, if we legalize Cocaine will people stop using Meth? Cocaine isn't nearly as harmful and was actually legal to use prior to the 1900's.

Meth is bad but I think its a drug of opportunity, you don't need poppies or coca from far away lands to make it, just a bunch of chemicals and it can be sold cheaper to boot but it is drastically more harmful than Cocaine and Heroin (both also addicting and should be used with extreme caution as should all drugs including alcohol)

I don't know how you're concluding that cocaine is safer than methamphetamine.

I know that far more Americans are killed annually by cocaine than by meth. Alcohol kills even more (alcohol poisoning; the data excludes substance-caused accidental deaths like car accidents). And legally produced pharmaceuticals kill even more than alcohol.

Note that I was speaking of "pure" drug. Crack Cocaine and Street Cocaine are not nearly as safe as pure cocaine and may actually be worse than Meth altho Meth is often "cut" with the same crap that causes Street Cocaine to be more harmful.

Safe drug use is about moderation, very few drugs are "addicted on first hit" and any drug can become a crutch for people who have unresolved issues in their life. We need to do better as a society of helping people not turn to drugs to deal with mental/physical issues in life.

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

"Might even create some jobs"Bye sonny, I have to get going to da crackhouse! I don't want to be late, last time my boss Pimpalicious had to slap me!

I kid, but in all seriousness these drugs are way too severe to be streamlined the same way as other now legal substances, it is already bad enough people seek this poison, let alone that there are people more than happy to supply them. Edit: After reading further commentaries I guess legalization to monitor consumption, I am sort of depressed that we have to legalize every drug out there hoping criminal activity, and addiction might die down one day.

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

Because they are highly addictive and expensive; that combination leads to violent crime due to the desperation that results from needing a fix but not having the resources.

In addition, meth in particular has some pretty nasty psychological effects. Do you really want to be around meth users?

The legalization argument makes sense with marijuana as a plant, but not so much with drugs that require processing.

They are expensive because they are illegal. No popular street drugs are inherently more expensive to manufacture than cheap OTC products like dramamine.

The drug war is justified recursively by its own damage. Why do you lock up the junkie when you catch him but not the alcoholic? The heroin user has to lie and steal to hide his habit and support it, so he's a greater danger to others than the guy who openly buys liquor every night and gets drunk. Why does the junkie lie and steal more than an alcoholic? Because drug warriors will lock him up if he's caught, and are always trying to make heroin maximally expensive.

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

Because they are highly addictive and expensive; that combination leads to violent crime due to the desperation that results from needing a fix but not having the resources.

In addition, meth in particular has some pretty nasty psychological effects. Do you really want to be around meth users?

The legalization argument makes sense with marijuana as a plant, but not so much with drugs that require processing.

Processing is immaterial. As another said, a lot of the worse drugs are drugs of opportunity. And we are already around meth users. Cocaine is or was apparently one of the largest markets in this country. And you can bet you're around marijuana users. They're everywhere.

It's certainly true that there are drugs that should never be used and there are some people that should never use drugs, no matter if others can handle it. It seems most rational to me to punish crimes done under the influence of drugs more harshly and to revoke the right to them. Not that that is necessarily going to stop some people, but hey, then we're no worse off then we were. Their ability to get the drugs more easily (an assumption, but probably true) may just translate into less crime to acquire their poison.

Depends, if we legalize Cocaine will people stop using Meth? Cocaine isn't nearly as harmful and was actually legal to use prior to the 1900's.

Meth is bad but I think its a drug of opportunity, you don't need poppies or coca from far away lands to make it, just a bunch of chemicals and it can be sold cheaper to boot but it is drastically more harmful than Cocaine and Heroin (both also addicting and should be used with extreme caution as should all drugs including alcohol)

Meth is a perfect example of why legalize it all is bad. Meth is an absolute disaster as a drug in terms of impact. There is no upset. It is pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

This is to say nothing of the damage of this war on innocent people, for instance the insanity in Mexico where estimates are of over a hundred thousand people killed between 2006 and 2013, many of them ordinary people who happened to be in the wrong place. People who have lived so long with uncontrolled violence they are numb to it. The war on drugs has a huge negative effect on the places the drugs come from, the artificially high price funds huge criminal organizations, allowing them to corrupt governments, and distort the real economy damaging the progress of legitimate sectors.

There are certainly problems that will arise from legalization - especially in the short-term when things are new and people are poorly educated and systems are not in place to handle the complications. But we have huge piles of problems stemming from the current system, and no signs of "winning the war," ever being possible.

I would much rather have an above-board system, where those involved are known and the overall business abides by the law. Where people living in supply areas can build a government, business, and social system without fear of criminal syndicates destroying their lives.

A system where people with addiction problems can get help without fear of being incarcerated, where every dose comes with warning labels and contact information for addiction support. Where the abusers are seen as having mental (and physical) health issues that need treatment, not as worthless criminals to be locked up. Where research on the causes of addiction and treatments can be performed easily with open subjects, to add more hope of finding lasting solutions to the addiction problem.

A system where the externalities can be quantified, and the production and distribution taxed to pay for those externalities.

Depends, if we legalize Cocaine will people stop using Meth? Cocaine isn't nearly as harmful and was actually legal to use prior to the 1900's.

Meth is bad but I think its a drug of opportunity, you don't need poppies or coca from far away lands to make it, just a bunch of chemicals and it can be sold cheaper to boot but it is drastically more harmful than Cocaine and Heroin (both also addicting and should be used with extreme caution as should all drugs including alcohol)

Meth is a perfect example of why legalize it all is bad. Meth is an absolute disaster as a drug in terms of impact. There is no upset. It is pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

You know that methamphetamine is prescribed legally on occasion, right? My sister had a prescription back in the 1990s. Surprisingly, this did not turn her into a toothless car stereo thief. Methamphetamine is schedule II, not a schedule I like those really dangerous drugs such as cannabis and mescaline.

Do you know anyone that does not use these drugs now that would suddenly start if they were legal? I say decriminalize, regulate, tax, educate, treat those that need it. Stop pissing away money on the 'war on drugs'.

Depends, if we legalize Cocaine will people stop using Meth? Cocaine isn't nearly as harmful and was actually legal to use prior to the 1900's.

Meth is bad but I think its a drug of opportunity, you don't need poppies or coca from far away lands to make it, just a bunch of chemicals and it can be sold cheaper to boot but it is drastically more harmful than Cocaine and Heroin (both also addicting and should be used with extreme caution as should all drugs including alcohol)

That's because hers didn't have all the nasty chemicals used to "cut" it. Those are what cause the problems with illegal methamphetamine.Meth is a perfect example of why legalize it all is bad. Meth is an absolute disaster as a drug in terms of impact. There is no upset. It is pretty much the bottom of the barrel.

You know that methamphetamine is prescribed legally on occasion, right? My sister had a prescription back in the 1990s. Surprisingly, this did not turn her into a toothless car stereo thief. Methamphetamine is schedule II, not a schedule I like those really dangerous drugs such as cannabis and mescaline.

Yes. Cocaine was legal for a long time and I believe is still used in medical settings. Meth is already legal, it's sold to people with "ADHD" as amphetamine salts called Adderall. Alcohol kills more people than crack, coke and heroin every year, so why don't we ban that instead?

If illegal narcotics are legalized there will be far less violence and theft to keep up their habit. Jail those who become violent, help those who become addicted (AA meetings anyone?) -- it's ridiculous to regulate what people put in their own bodies.

Why not? Taxed and regulated it could be a huge boon. Instead, we are spending a huge amount of money, treating addicts, chasing dealers and users, jailing users, without getting much back. Might even create some jobs.

Cocaine was legal at one point. There were some pretty serious public health problems ensuing from that. You can go back and look at the statistics.

American laws against cocaine & marijuana were not the result of any kind of rational consideration of evidence. They resulted from a massive fraud: extreme bigotry expressed as "yellow journalism".

[...] The war fury that led to the Spanish American War in 1898 was ignited by William Randolph Hearst through his nationwide chain of newspapers, and marked the beginning of “yellow journalism”* as a force in American politics. *Webster’s Dictionary defines “yellow journalism” as the use of cheaply sensational or unscrupulous methods in newspapers and other media to attract or influence the readers. [...]

Starting with the 1898 Spanish American War, the Hearst newspaper had denounced Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Latinos.

After the seizure of 800,000 acres of Hearst’s prime Mexican timberland by the “marihuana” smoking army of Pancho Villa,* these slurs intensified.

*The song “La Cucaracha” tells the story of one of Villa’s men looking for his stash of “marijuana por fumar!” (to smoke!)

Non-stop for the next three decades, Hearst painted a picture of the lazy, pot-smoking Mexican, still one of our most insidious prejudices. Simultaneously, he waged a similar racist smear campaign against the Chinese, referring to them as the “Yellow Peril.”

From 1910 to 1920, Hearst’s newspapers would claim that the majority of incidents in which blacks were said to have raped white women, could be traced directly to cocaine. This continued for 10 years until Hearst decided it was not “cocaine-crazed negroes” raping white women – it was now “marijuana-crazed negroes” raping white women. [...]

You do realise that there is a difference between something taken under medical advice with supervision, and the same thing taken by someone who has had no professional assessment or medical need.

Also, do you reckon maybe alcohol kills more than illegal drugs because alcohol is easier to get and legal? Legalizing all substances could very well result in more people putting all sorts of crap into their bodies and suffering more consequences than alcohol alone.

The other important distinction is that most people drink alcoholic drinks because they taste nice, not because you can get drunk off your tits. I don't see people taking cocaine for the smell and flavour. Marijuana is sometimes smoked for the flavor but even then it is more often smoked for the high.

The assertion that marijuana is a "gateway drug" actually seems to have more truth than anyone realized. Hear me out on this. Now that marijuana is legalised in some parts of the US, it seems to be leading toward calls to legalise anything that can be smoked, injected or swallowed - things that are known to be harmful to individuals and to society. Marijuana legalization is a "gateway" to legalizing hard drugs.

You do realise that there is a difference between something taken under medical advice with supervision, and the same thing taken by someone who has had no professional assessment or medical need.

Also, do you reckon maybe alcohol kills more than illegal drugs because alcohol is easier to get and legal? Legalizing all substances could very well result in more people putting all sorts of crap into their bodies and suffering more consequences than alcohol alone.

The other important distinction is that most people drink alcoholic drinks because they taste nice, not because you can get drunk off your tits. I don't see people taking cocaine for the smell and flavour. Marijuana is sometimes smoked for the flavor but even then it is more often smoked for the high.

Flavor is a good argument for beer and wine, but who drinks vodka for the flavor?

One of the reasons alcohol kills a lot more people than illegal drugs is that it's easier to get.Another reason is that the difference between pleasant drunkenness and fatal alcohol poisoning is fairly small in terms of dose; I'd call it a small therapeutic index if alcohol were being used therapeutically. That's why stories of fatal alcohol poisoning at parties are routine.

Some illegal drugs are far less likely to kill people from high dosage consumption: it's close to impossible for someone to experience a fatal OD on cannabis or tryptamines.

Cocaine, amphetamines, and opiates are pretty easy to fatally OD on too, but I don't think their therapeutic index is actually narrower than that of ethanol.

I think that more people will harm and kill themselves with "hard" drugs if all drugs are legalized. I'm still in favor of across-the-board legalization. The reason is that I can't believe that allowing more people to harm themselves can possibly be worse than the damage from the Drug War status quo. I'd prefer a dozen accidental cocaine user deaths over one more Mexican mayor assassinated by cartels. I'd prefer a dozen heroin ODs over one more bystander shot in inner city drug turf wars.

I don't understand why so many posters here believe it is OK to legalize drugs. If you study history, it is easy to see that there is nothing pretty when drugs usage become popular in a country. Try looking up the First Opium War and the Second Opium War in wikipedia. Short summary: country with large number of drugs users lose wars. For a more recent example, there are some articles in the web about the widespread drugs problem in the former Soviet republic of Geogria, and the measures they have to take to combat it, but right now I cannot find the links.

I don't understand why so many posters here believe it is OK to legalize drugs. If you study history, it is easy to see that there is nothing pretty when drugs usage become popular in a country. Try looking up the First Opium War and the Second Opium War in wikipedia. Short summary: country with large number of drugs users lose wars. For a more recent example, there are some articles in the web about the widespread drugs problem in the former Soviet republic of Geogria, and the measures they have to take to combat it, but right now I cannot find the links.

Being legal has nothing to do with conduct drive drunk go to jail because being wasted is not a pass to do whatever you want. You think being illegal stops junkies? It doesn't trust me I am one and even though I do the legal way today "methadone clinic" the last thing on my mind when looking for a fix was the law. We have countless gang related drug turf wars, cartel wars pouring over our border, people being forced to do stupid shit like bath salts to try and fill a void being turned into cannibals in the process, and countless billions being spent to jail addicts.

We should legalize and tax it all because junkies are going to get their fix one way or another. Well I am at least, but I'm pretty sure most junkies are on par with me. Plus harsh addicts like me will never recover my brain will never be normal. That's my own fault, but that doesn't matter anymore and I'll do everything in my power to feel normal whether anyone likes it or not. If methadone was banned tomorrow I'd replace it with heroin. Lucky for me it's not up to people like you because you don't get it and honestly I'm cool with that because I would never wish it on anyone. It's a hard game and the void without the fix is fucked up to put it lightly. Plus drug usage is already widespread just go to the slums and you'll see what I mean.

I don't understand why so many posters here believe it is OK to legalize drugs. If you study history, it is easy to see that there is nothing pretty when drugs usage become popular in a country. Try looking up the First Opium War and the Second Opium War in wikipedia. Short summary: country with large number of drugs users lose wars. For a more recent example, there are some articles in the web about the widespread drugs problem in the former Soviet republic of Geogria, and the measures they have to take to combat it, but right now I cannot find the links.

Actually the history of the first Opium War is that Britain used its superior military power to force China to allow opium imports. China got a lot of drug users because it lost the war, it didn't lose the war because it had a lot of drug users.

Do you know how China eventually undermined the British opium trade? It allowed domestic production.